THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P. by ADELLE WALDMAN: A BOOK REVIEW

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P. by Adelle Waldman
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Before starting the review, I’d like to thanks @HTBrunch Magazine for making this review happen through their #BrunchBookChallenge in which you have to read just 24 books to complete the challenge. For making me read a book by an author who knows exactly how to put some relevant words between more words. I met Adelle Waldman’s highly acclaimed The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. a best book of the year 2013 by The New Yorker, The Economist, The Daily Beast, The Guardian (UK) and many more.

Being a debut novelist and having a strong reading-background, having read Jane Austen, George Eliot, Balzac, and Tolstoy, Waldman through her words has a eerie talent of describing women through a man’s eyes. When I had started to read the book, I found it quite fascinating on the point that how a woman can describe my subconscious behavior toward women better than myself?

Waldman’s novel concentrates on the experiences of a young man, Nathaniel Piven or ‘Nate’ as he is called, in short. Nathaniel Piven is Harvard drop-out, ambitiously intellectual, well-groomed who writes book reviews and cultural criticism for magazines and he’s just sold a book for a six-figure advance. Waldman’s protagonist is a perfectly honest and socially responsible guy who in her own words, as she tells us at the opening, “… was a product of a post-feminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education. He had learned all about male privilege. Moreover he was in possession of a functional and frankly rather clamorous conscience.” He is particularly sensitive unlike his male friends who are still amused at rating women’s breasts. Although the book makes reference to several previous love affairs in Nate’s life, the novel concentrates on one promising relationship with an attractive freelance writer named Hannah.

The plot is not that hefty but the author’s illustration of relationship insecurities and tension is quite noteworthy. On reading Nate’s present and past and present life, one might find him fascinating and I must add that the reality regardless of him being of total screw up, is demonstrated by the author very skilfully.

Waldman has used her skill and crafted an elegant story that is humorous and intelligent, providing a new look to see the reality. The way she portraits the “love affairs” of Nate, his Brooklyn life, along with the fact that she is illustrating the behavior of man subconscious toward women needs a lot of skill, and patience in developing the book. I believe Adelle Waldman has both up to the highest level.

Certainly, I am waiting for her next novel.

I’d like to recommend this book to someone who wants to read something new, something different in the contemporary world, something which is skillfully written and the best debutante of 2013.